VILNIUS (AFP) ― Lithuania’s “Iron Lady” Dalia Grybauskaite won an unprecedented second term Sunday in a presidential runoff held amid widespread apprehension over a resurgent Russia.

Many here who remember Soviet times see the karate black belt ― who is nicknamed for her Thatcher-esque toughness ― as their best choice to steer the country through Europe’s worst standoff with Moscow since the Cold War.

“No president has been elected twice in a row in Lithuania,” she said as official results showed her capturing 58 percent support in the runoff against leftist rival Zigmantas Balcytis.

Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaite (AFP-Yonhap)

“It will be a historic victory for all of you,” she said, with over 80 percent of the vote counted.

“Amid an increasing sense of insecurity and uncertainty, a majority of voters have a chosen reliable and tested person,” Vilnius University analyst Tomas Janeliunas told AFP as the results rolled in.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and saber-rattling in its Kaliningrad exclave have sparked palpable fear in neighboring Lithuania, a country of 3 million people.

Remigijus Paplauskas, a prison warden who lives near Kaliningrad, worries that Moscow could try to destabilize the Baltic states, which shook off five decades under the Soviet yoke in 1990-91 before joining NATO and the EU in 2004.